


Panic! At the Disco

by Control_Room, Random_ag



Series: Tortured Tales [20]
Category: Bendy and the Ink Machine
Genre: Child Abuse, False Memories, Fear of Being Chained, Near Drowning, domestic abuse, overwritten memories, repetitive, thalassophobia (fear of ocean)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-23
Updated: 2020-11-23
Packaged: 2021-03-10 07:26:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27679388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Control_Room/pseuds/Control_Room, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Random_ag/pseuds/Random_ag
Summary: Atabulus was a doctor, and Joey had phobias. Atabulus tried to cure him of them.Right?
Relationships: Joey Drew & Joey Drew's Father
Series: Tortured Tales [20]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2023520





	Panic! At the Disco

The ocean is big, cold, and terrifying. 

Chains are heavy, tight, and scary.

Those are subjective facts.

Johan’s father was a doctor.

He tried to cure him of his phobias.

Those are objective facts.

Atabulus had brought him to the ocean, and gave him a rope with a loop at the end to hold onto. He smiled soft and gentle at him. 

“Face your fears, son,” he murmured. “I’m right here. I won’t let anything hurt you.

The salt water’s mist sprayed onto him, coating him and making Joey shiver. Atabulus did not succeed in getting Johan to go into the mass of liquid, and gave up. They went home after that.

No, no, something is off.

Atabulus was not one to give up, no, he would have strived to make certain to eradicate Joey’s terror of the seas. 

Atabulus brought him to the ocean, and gave him a rope with a loop at the end to hold onto, carefully tying it to his hand so that he could release it if he so chose, but holding him carefully nonetheless. He smiled wide and spirited at him. 

“Face your fears, son,” he said. “I'm right here.”

The salt water's mist sprayed onto his ankles in waves, coating him and making Joey shudder. When he realized his son would not enter on his own, Atabulus gently pushed him inside, in the way a father playfully throws his child in the safety of a small pool. Joey sputtered and thrashed in the water, terrified and flailing, and so Atabulus fetched him out. Alessandra held Joey close to her chest as she wrapped him in a towel, and they went back home.

No. No, that could not be right.

There was no ocean. They lived in a desert. Atabulus made sure they did not own a car, their main transportation being that of horseback and carriage. Where would there be a sea? 

Atabulus brought him to the large pool in the back courtyard, filled now with the saline mixture that was the ocean’s water. He tightly tied a padded rope to Joey’s wrist so that his son could not slip from its grasp, securing him to himself. He smiled big and impish at him.

“Face your fears, son.” he told him. “I'm here.”

The salt water on his ankles lapped up his legs, mist emanating from off of his body and making Joey tremble. When he realized his son would not enter by his own accord, Atabulus pushed him inside the pool suddenly, without warning. Joey sputtered and thrashed in the waters, terrified and flailing as he involuntarily gulped down glasses of seawater, eyes becoming wet with the same liquid, and after a minute or so of waiting, Atabulus fetched him out. Alessandra wrapped him tightly in soft towels and assured him that it would not happen again.

No, no, something still did not make sense.

They did not have a pool. Nor was Atabulus the kind to use simple rope. Ropes were for horses in the doctor’s eyes, and his son was not a horse. Perhaps a coward, but not a horse.

Atabulus brought him to a large open enclosure on that awful orange floor, a hexagonal glass container which he had filled with ocean water, artificial waves caused by a pulsing machine beneath the water. He fastened a thin manacle around Joey's thinner wrist, making sure to hold him back with an iron chain so that he could not escape its grasp. He smiled wide and mischievous at him.

“Face your fears, son.” he instructed him. “You must.”

The salt water lapped cold at his ankles and legs as he hesitantly put them in according to his father’s wishes, yet trying to avoid the terrifying matter, sitting on the thick side of the glass wall. Noting his son’s reluctance and fear, Atabulus gave a quick yank on the chain from below, the force so great that Johan felt his wrist twist, and his thin frame was dragged into the water. He desperately flailed and screamed for his father in horror, all while scrabbling at the sheer glass walls, inhaling jugs of salmaster liquid with every plea for help. Atabulus waited ten, twenty, thirty minutes without moving an inch; finally, he hauled Johan out of the container. He shook like a drowned rat on the floor, heaving and coughing out masses upon multitudes of the sea water. Alessandra’s quick footsteps approached, and she wrapped him quickly in her dress while playfully glaring at Atabulus, and then she whisked him to his bed, tucking him in with promises of a repeat never occurring. 

Wrong!

That was wrong. Wrong!

Wrong, _wrong_ , **_wrong_ ** , **_WRONG!_ **

It was _wrong_ , it could not be _anything_ but wrong. It was horrendously fake and flattened, a gross parody of the original happening. A sugar coated retelling of the horrid tale.

Stop shielding him. Stop screening him. 

He does not deserve that.

Atabulus was a monster.

Atabulus brought him into the Red Room despite his reluctance, and forced him inside of a tube right across the crematorium, the boy’s stare darting back and forth between them in fear. The pipes attached to it terrified him, wafting along a smell he knew well from night terrors, and the chains at the bottom made his heart accelerate. The fear forced him to fight his father, though he was far too small to do anything effective against him, despite his panic. Atabulus easily shackled both of Johan's wrists to the bottom with those osmium chains, their dense weight already carving deep signs into the thin flesh, especially as Johan struggled against them all whilst screaming. Atabulus wiped Johan’s tears with a silk handkerchief, and smiled broad and devilish at him.

“Face your fears.” he ordered as he set up the rest of the device, even as Joey’s pleas were drowned out by the thick glass. He pulled a lever and the tubes connected to Johan’s vial began slowly trickling down the liquid of his nightmares, gaining velocity as more seeped in, splashing and waving. His chains rattled as he yelped and backed away from the growing pool of water. “You must.”

The salt water began lapping at Johan's feet, spraying droplets onto him and filling the glass structure with its characteristic salty scent. Sooner than Johan would have liked or expected, it was reaching hungrily up to his ankles to swallow him whole, no matter how he banged on the glass and begged to be let out. He was crying desperately when the water caressed his shaking legs preventing his knees from knocking any longer, cold and mist wrapping up to his tight stomach, pouring to cradle fluttering ribs jumping as quick as a hummingbird’s flight. His tears did nothing but merge seamlessly into the ocean that Atabulus had brought just for him. Atabulus stared at his writhing, smiling, waiting as his son begged him not to let him drown, his energy slowly being sapped by the dense metal dragging him down even as he struggled to rise above the water. Joey’s vision became blurred as the water rose over his head and into his body with every attempted breath.

“Papi please!”

Yellow glasses.

“Papi!”

Splashing.

“ _Please!_ ” 

Salt water.

“ _Papi, please, PAPI!_ ”

Chains.

“ _PA--_ ” he choked, the water too high for him to keep springing up. He drew in a breath when he could, sinking to the floor of the tube. 

He stayed on the bottom until he could not take it anymore, leaping to the top to inhale, coughing underwater as water mixed with the fruit of his labor, lungs aching. 

The waters are dark and deep….

Johan’s eyes drifted shut.

Sleep.

Suddenly a suction pulled him out, and he found himself on the floor, heaving and shaking. 

Yelling.

His eyes creaked open.

Alessandra and Atabulus were shouting at one another, both waving in his direction. The long hem and skirt of his mother’s dress was sopping wet; clearly she had been the one to release him from his transparent prison. His father struck her.

He had no strength to lift his head. 

He closed his eyes for a moment. He felt the screams get louder, a pressure on his body, some sort of fabric around him. Demanding a key, demanding a key. Combination forty two, seven. His mother rushed with him in tow to his room, changing him out of his heavy wet clothes. Saline dripped from the corner of his mouth, head weighing down. Alessandra held him tight as she dried the salt water off of him and swore to him feverishly in his ear, over and over, that it would never happen again.

… right.

Terribly right.

Horribly, grotesquely right.

Johan’s prone form twitched. He struggled with his mind, trying to unbury the memories that he had ignored for his entire life. All the lies, all the mistakes, he accepted them to believe in a better life.

Not anymore.

He was not going to screen anyone anymore.

Let alone Atabulus Ramirez.


End file.
